August 11, 2009

Editorial Work Is HARD, Asshole!

We're back to the stupid argument about whether editors just take what's coming in through the transom vs. what writers whom they've invited to submit have sent them vs. what they've read before. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Are those the only options? WHEN DID EDITORS BECOME SO FUCKING PASSIVE?

Okay, look, I come into fandom via "literary" fiction, not the other way around. And yes, a lot of lit fic editors are lazy fuckers, too. But the basic expectation over there is that you get work by:

calling for submissions

keeping up with your peers so that you know what other editors are publishing. This is so you know what's current in the field, but also so you know what's being overplayed, so that you DON'T publish that.

research into new authors, works, and trends. That's what this post is about, so keep reading.

inviting interesting writers to submit. You know who's interesting by keeping up with the field and doing your research.

maintaining relationships with agents and writers and asking them to find or create specific types of work. This is more proactive than #4, which passively asks specific people to submit what they've already written or to submit what they want to write for your collection. #5 is about actively shaping what people write; and it gives you the opportunity to give writers new opportunities, and to push promising writers in new directions, if you are so inclined. This is a tactic used for books primarily, but can be used for themed anthologies as well (and is so used, frequently.)

What boggles my mind is not that SF readers are ignorant of the editorial process, but that the implication that has been coming out of this argument is that SF editors DON'T GO THROUGH ALL THOSE STEPS. Somebody please tell me I'm wrong about that!

Because "resting on the laurels of what you've already read" is not one of the above steps, and is not part of the editorial process. People who are experts in a field are chosen to, or permitted to, create anthologies because they have a strong background in the field that allows them to understand the new stuff that they're seeing, and NOT because they've already read everything they need to read to create an anthology. Anthologizing is hard work not because you have to read so much slush (get an intern to weed that shit out) but because of all that other work you have to do. And if you're not doing it, you're doing a piss-poor job.

So, to get down to the nitty gritty, as someone in Tempest's comments asked to do, how do you -- not "become a good editor" but -- change the way you do business so that your editing becomes more than an exercise in futility? Here are some steps:

Go out an read diverse stuff. This is not hard. There is google. Go to google and look up "African American fiction anthology," "Asian American fiction anthology," "New Women Writers," "LGBT Fiction" etc. Check these books out of the library. Read them. Then pick the two or three writers whose stories you liked the most AND WHOSE STORIES YOU HATED THE MOST, and read a book each by them. Look them up on wikipedia and find out who their influences and mentors were and read a book each by them. Etc.

Go to Wiscon, Diversicon, Gaylaxicon, whatever, and talk to people who don't look or talk like you. Ask them what they're reading and what they think you should be reading (the answer to these two questions will usually be different.) Take notes. Then GO READ some of what they told you to read.

Send your calls for submissions out to all the people of color you know and ask them to forward it. Follow up with them a week later and ask them where they sent/posted it. Sign up for those lists/groups and follow up on those lists/groups a week later with a personal invitation from the editor to EVERYONE ON THE LIST to submit work. Also go here and send calls for subs to these folks and follow up. ALWAYS FOLLOW UP!

If you are a real editor, then you live in a real city with real readings. Go to them. Ask around for the POC/LGBT/Women's/whatever readings and attend them. They will be mostly boring or painful. That's how it is. You have to dig for gold. Keep going. Every time you go, talk to two people you don't know, especially if they look like they're in charge or if they know a lot of people. Ask them to recommend other readings in the city you should see. Carry cards and call for subs fliers with you. EVERY SINGLE TIME you see writer you think is remotely good, hand them a flier. In fact, hand them to writers you don't think are that good either, and ask them to pass it around. Do this in every city you go to.

Keep doing this. This is not a remedial course that will eventually finish, after which, you will now be diversified. This now how you do your job. Keep doing your job.

Yeah, sounds impossible doesn't it? Right? Right? I mean, who has time to do all that learning about writers and keeping up with writers when you have so much ... editing to do?

And before you ask, YES I HAVE DONE IT, not as an editor, but as a multidisciplinary arts curator. I did it for four years, spent four years going out almost every night to shows, talking to total strangers and asking them to send me stuff, designing and printing calls for submissions and handing them out everywhere, etc. etc. Yeah, it's a full-time job. That's why they call it "a full-time job".

As far as editing an anthology goes, I haven't done that, but it's akin to (but a lot more serious and long-term than) the work I
put into creating a reading binder for a writing class. Class reading
binders are about book-length, like a short anthology, and need to
demonstrate a variety of writing techniques clearly. They also need to
tell a variety of types of stories so the students have models of the
types of stories they can tell, so that they aren't limited by the
narrow scope of their current imagination (my writing assignments tend
to focus on both content and form.) And, as a writer of color who
generally teaches writing in the context of community antiracist
organizations, I make it a point to make my binders diverse in terms of
who is writing the stories, their point of view, and their content.

So, how do I do all of this? Dude. I read. A lot.

I
ask my list-servs (I've been on a few writers' and readers'
list-servs) and I ask friends that I know are readers and experts. And
then I go online and look up reading lists, and go to Amazon and look
up anthologies and then get them out of the library. And read them.
And mark them up with those bookmark post-its, so that I have stacks of
books around the house that look like they're wounded and bleeding
(because if a book was wounded, wouldn't it bleed pink paper?) These
are books with subtitles like "An anthology of fiction about 9/11" and
"New African fiction," and "Poetry About War."

And, here's the
thing: I START OUT with, not a quota system, but a food groups scheme:
this meal has to have meat, veg, fruit, grain, dairy. And it has to fit
into another of my diversity categories: one of the formal ones, and
one of the content ones. So I can't just grab at random one story each
by an Arab, African, Asian, Latino, and Native American about their
families. One of these stories has to be science fiction, and one has
to be about war, and one has to have a sex scene in it, and one has to
be a coming-of-age. One of these stories has to be in first, one in
second, and one in third person. One has to be minimalist, and one has
to contain a lot of lists, and one has to be written in lush, lyrical
prose. Etc.

Yes, I start out there, with the categories, but I
don't end there. Because the most important thing I talk about with my
writing students is LIFE, or that mysterious something in a story that
makes the whole piece of writing come alive for the reader. So, just any contemporary fiction by any Arab or Latino won't do. It has to get under my collar, whisper to me, pop, or just make me uncomfortable. It has to be alive. I'm fine if it's going to make the students angry, as long as it makes them feel something.

I made a spec fic reader for high school students once that included Jaime Hernandez' first few pages of his Locas
series, and a story by Ursula Le Guin. I chose both of these because
they were both from genre-changing writers, and because I thought the
pieces were cool. The Locas piece baffled them: comic books
weren't about Latina punk rock chicks arguing about their waitressing
jobs and then becoming rocketship mechanics! WTF? And the Le Guin
story, "Darkrose and Diamond," pissed them off. It was a
sort of YA-ish coming-of-age story about a kid who had magic but chose
to pursue his gift for music instead. His choice angered them
incredibly because they were led to believe this was a story about the
acquisition of a superpower, and instead the protag chose to ignore the
standard reader wish-fulfillment.

These discussions, about
stories that I thought they would love, became incredibly rich
discussions about reader expectations, and the rewards and dangers of
subverting them. The kids actually learned more than I intended to
teach them. And at the end of the class, those two stories were the
ones they remembered the best.

If I hadn't made a point of
making that SF reader diverse, if I had just gone by the white, male
classics, I might not have thought to include Jaime Hernandez, or even
Ursula Le Guin. The point here is that when you go for diversity -- by
setting up food groups or quotas, by going for work that has challenged
you or others in the past, by taking a chance with something slightly
outside the mainstream -- you often get more even than you thought you
were getting. You often get a challenge you didn't realize was there, a
subversion that hadn't occurred to you, a lesson you didn't know needed
to be made.

Yeah, it's a shitload of work. And this
is just the reader for a class. It's not an anthology for the ages.
It's not going into libraries and personal collections. It makes no
claim to definitiveness. Imagine how much reading you would have to do
for that.

But that's the job, Asshole. And if you're not willing to do that much work, then don't make anthologies.
THAT'S why people are so pissed off at Mammoth Mike Ashley, not because
he's a white male, but because he didn't do his job, and the rest of us
marginalized folks are gonna suffer, as usual, for it.